Modern Devil's Advocacy: Disrupt Groupthink, Build Stronger Plans, and Achieve Better Results

By Robert Koshinskie

In 2018, the celebrated biotechnology startup Theranos collapsed from a market valuation of over $9 billion into bankruptcy and felony charges against its superstar founder, Elizabeth Holmes. This spectacular failure was due in large part to the silencing of dissenting voices who challenged the dubious claims and questionable decisions by Theranos leadership. Similar catastrophic examples can be found in business, the military and other human activities.

Modern Devil’s Advocacy is a form of challenge analysis that’s intended to help overcome our human bias and fallacious reasoning, disrupt groupthink, reduce risk, and achieve better outcomes. By creating a strong counter case to any decision, modern Devil’s Advocates can help others see potential weaknesses in their assumptions, beliefs, and judgments.

This book will show you how practically anyone from the CEO to the newly minted manager can and should think and act like a modern Devil’s Advocate. You will learn the origin of modern Devil’s Advocacy, why the practice is desperately needed today, and how to apply modern Devil’s Advocacy in any setting. If you want to learn how to constructively challenge the judgments that you and others make and achieve better outcomes, then this book is for you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Business Expert Press
• Release date: Jan 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9781637421765

Robert Koshinskie

Robert Koshinskie is the principal of Ringbolt Consulting where he assists clients with business analysis and strategy. He is also a mentor in the NSF I-Corps™ Program and the creator and instructor of a decision-making seminar through NC State University Division of Continuing and Professional Education.

Book preview

Modern Devil’s Advocacy

Modern Devil’s Advocacy

Disrupt Groupthink, Build Stronger Plans, and Achieve Better Results

Robert Koshinskie

Modern Devil’s Advocacy:

Disrupt Groupthink, Build Stronger Plans, and Achieve Better Results

Copyright © Business Expert Press, LLC, 2022.

Cover design by Divya Pidaparti

Interior design by Exeter Premedia Services Private Ltd., Chennai, India

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other except for brief quotations, not to exceed 400 words, without the prior permission of the publisher.

First published in 2021 by

Business Expert Press, LLC

222 East 46th Street, New York, NY 10017

www.businessexpertpress.com

ISBN-13: 978-1-63742-175-8 (paperback)

ISBN-13: 978-1-63742-176-5 (e-book)

Business Expert Press Entrepreneurship and Small Business

Management Collection

Collection ISSN: 1946-5653 (print)

Collection ISSN: 1946-5661 (electronic)

First edition: 2021

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For my wife, Diane, partner, caregiver, artist, a true alchemist.

Description

In December 1941, shortly after the devastating attack by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, the headquarters of General Douglas MacArthur was warned that a similar attack on his forces in the Philippines may occur. The warning was essentially ignored and ensuing Japanese attacks over the next several days decimated MacArthur’s air support, resulting in catastrophic losses and a surrender of U.S. military forces.¹In 2018, after the start-up biotechnology company, Theranos had achieved a market value of over $9 billion in just 5 years’ time, the enterprise crashed into bankruptcy and felony charges of conspiracy and wire fraud against its celebrity founder, Elizabeth Holmes. This spectacular failure was due, in large part, to powerful supporters of the firm who didn’t believe in dissenting voices, who challenged the dubious claims and questionable operations of Theranos leadership.

Authoritarian decisions and majority opinions like the earlier examples can lead to disastrous results. How might things have turned out differently in these examples if decision makers had sought out and seriously considered thoughtful, dissenting opinions? How might you avoid failure and achieve better outcomes in your daily business and personal decisions?

Modern Devil’s Advocacy is a form of challenge analysis that’s intended to help overcome our human bias and fallacious reasoning, disrupt groupthink, and achieve better outcomes. By creating a strong counter case to a decision, modern Devil’s Advocates can help the original decision makers see potential weaknesses in their assumptions, beliefs, and judgments.

The premise of this book is that practically anyone from the CEO to the newly minted manager can and should think and act like a modern Devil’s Advocate. This book discusses the origin of modern Devil’s Advocacy, why the practice is needed today, and how to apply modern Devil’s Advocacy in any setting. If you want to learn how to constructively challenge the judgments that you and others make to achieve better outcomes, then this book is for you.

Keywords

devil’s advocacy; devil’s advocate; project management; business analysis; best practice; process improvement; decision making; critical thinking; systems thinking; logical argument; cognitive bias; logical fallacy; groupthink; lean startup; agile; structured analytic technique; red team; red hat

Contents

Testimonials

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Section I The Case for Modern Devil’s Advocacy

Section II Applying Modern Devil’s Advocacy

Closing Thoughts

Suggested Reading and Resources

Notes

References

About the Author

Index

Testimonials

Robert Koshinskie makes a compelling case for the devil’s advocate and offers practical advice for those brave enough to play that important role in their organization. This sort of applied critical thinking is exactly what companies need more of if they are to not only thrive, but survive, in today’s complex and rapidly changing world.—Bryce G. Hoffman, President, Red Team Thinking LLC, author of Red Teaming: How Your Business Can Conquer the Competition by Challenging Everything

Succinctly explains modern Devil’s Advocacy and provides clear guidelines on how to conduct a useful challenge analysis. A fantastic book that provides a great deal of value to the reader.—Theodore Kalmbach, Chief Strategy Officer, BNNano, Inc.

As a former participant in the NSF I-Corps Program, I really enjoyed Robert Koshinskie’s guidance on how to apply modern Devil’s Advocacy in daily practice. His book will be useful to industry mentors, graduate researchers, and faculty members who are involved in technology transfer efforts, including the I-Corps Program.—Maryam Rahmaniheris, PhD, Upstream Product Manager, Spacelabs Healthcare

Acknowledgments

Thanks to those who gave their valuable time to review and comment on the material for this book.

Bryce Hoffman, president of Red Team Thinking LLC. In 2015, Hoffman became the first civilian to graduate from the U.S. Army’s Red Team Leader Program at the University of Foreign Military and Cultural Studies at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Hoffman is a lecturer at U.C. Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and writes a column on leadership and business culture for Forbes.com. Hoffman appears regularly on television and radio shows in the United States and around the world, including the BBC, NPR, CNN, Fox Business, and Bloomberg.

Theodore Kalmbach, chief strategy officer with the advanced materials firm, BNNano. Prior to his current position, Kalmbach held a variety of positions where challenge analysis was critical, including as a diplomat for the U.S. Department of State, an analyst for the Institute for Defense Analyses (where he advised the Pentagon on counterinsurgency strategy), and a strategy consultant for Accenture in Munich and Berlin.

Maryam Rahmaniheris, PhD whose various research includes the design and evaluation of integrated emergency medical assist systems to mitigate preventable medical errors. Dr. Rahmaniheris was also a participant in the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps Program (NSF I-Corps) which I discuss later in this book.

Rosemary Tracy, marketing/advertising professional and entrepreneur, with a focus in Business and Management. Rosemary is a former director of Colangelo Synergy Marketing and vice president of G2 Marketing/ Subsidiary of Grey Advertising (formerly J. Brown LMC).

Thanks also to those who reviewed the material of my earlier work, excerpts of which appear in this book. Kristan Wheaton, professor of Strategic Futures, U.S. Army War College. David Johnson, former president and current senior advisor to Laerdal Medical Corporation. Linda Hurwitz, entrepreneur, advisor, and coach to CEOs and business owners. Gene Bellinger, organizational theorist in systems thinking and knowledge management. Thomas Dyar, specialist in machine learning and artificial intelligence and former manager for External Innovation & Data Science at Becton Dickinson. Tracie Coletto, former senior field marketing manager for Philips Healthcare. Thomas Hogan, entrepreneur, chief financial officer, general manager, old friend, and advisor.

Finally, thanks to the BEP editorial and production team for their guidance and work to produce the book that you now hold: Scott Isenberg, Scott Shane, Charlene Kronstedt, Melissa Yeager, Divya Pidaparti. Thanks, too, to Gunabala Saladi and the team at Exeter Premedia Services.

Introduction

The book that you are now holding discusses modern Devil’s Advocacy and presents a view that is likely at odds with your understanding of the term. As I’ll explain in the pages ahead, modern Devil’s Advocacy is not about role-playing or yet another stepwise process or best practice that claims to reliably lead to the right answer. A balance of intuition and analysis, modern Devil’s Advocacy is about applying a usefully skeptical point of view and behaviors that can help address our cognitive bias and fallacious reasoning. The guidance I offer should not be considered a new and improved dogma, but a foundational skill required for other analyses and decision making.

The concepts discussed in this book do not require that you have a background or expertise in business, science, or any other domain. Modern Devil’s Advocacy is not limited to any specific persona and can be practiced by anyone regardless of their age, experience, training, gender, and so on. I use gender-based pronouns in the book material (he, she, his, and hers) randomly so the content is inclusive—no other meaning should be attributed to the use of these pronouns. Practically anyone from the CEO to the new hire can become a modern Devil’s Advocate if they have the desire to do so. If you practice modern Devil’s Advocacy, then you are a modern Devil’s Advocate.

I’ve organized this book into two sections. Section I offers a brief history of Devil’s Advocacy, discusses the many challenges to decision making in today’s complex world, and suggests how the practice of modern Devil’s Advocacy can help improve judgments. Section II provides guidance in the practice of modern Devil’s Advocacy that can be applied to practically any situation, and I include an example of the unofficial role that modern Devil’s Advocacy serves in the popular lean start-up¹ approach. I hope that you find the journey ahead interesting and informative, and that you consider embracing the daily practice of modern Devil’s Advocacy.

SECTION I

The Case for Modern Devil’s Advocacy

The term Devil’s Advocate is very common these days. While writing this book, I ran a Google search that returned about three million instances of the term. Unfortunately, Devil’s Advocacy and the role of a modern Devil’s Advocate are widely misunderstood. Very often, Devil’s Advocacy is reduced to either a simple opinion offered by a friend or business associate, or as a conveniently superficial means to attack another person’s character. Consequently, many may believe that they are acting as a modern Devil’s Advocate or are the unfortunate target of Devil’s Advocate’s personal attack. In this first section of the book, I’ll provide an overview of modern Devil’s Advocacy to dispel common misinterpretations of the practice, to explore the need to regularly challenge our assumptions and judgments, and to understand the usefulness that modern Devil’s Advocacy offers.

A Very Brief History of Devil’s Advocacy

Devil’s Advocacy is a very old idea that serves as a model for the modern Devil’s Advocacy discussed in this book. The concept of Devil’s Advocacy originated in the Roman Catholic Church around 1381 AD and was institutionalized as a Church practice a couple of hundred years later.¹ The purpose of this practice was to investigate popular candidates for whom sainthood was proposed. The men who were tasked to conduct these investigations held the official title of Promotor of the Faith. Working against a person’s sainthood, however, these individuals were commonly referred to as the Devil’s Advocate.

The role of the original Devil’s Advocate emerged from a decision in the 1630s by the Church leadership to have more uniform standards when considering a proposed candidate for sainthood. Prior to the appearance of the Devil’s Advocate, local clergy and parishioners might revere any popular individual as a saint. For example, In rural France, St. Guinefort was venerated as the protector of infants after he saved his master’s baby from a snakebite. St. Guinefort was a dog.² Devil’s Advocates were key participants in the Church’s move toward a laws-based approach to sainthood that was similar to the Courts of the Inquisition and is why both endeavors shared the structure of a trial (i.e., witnesses, depositions, evidence).³

By the 20th century, the duties of the Church’s Devil’s Advocate included the prevention of any rash decisions concerning miracles or virtues of the candidates and "to suggest natural explanations for alleged miracles, and even to bring forward human and selfish motives for deeds